Tomorrow (Wednesday 19th February) will see protests outside ATOS offices across Britain, opposing the company which is passing public money on to their shareholders in exchange for denying disabled people their disability related benefits.
Thousands of people have died within weeks of having their benefits stopped, many have taken their own lives and many more live in dread of the assessment notice falling on to their door mat. The assessments are little more than a box ticking exercise designed to find people fit for work rather than to assess their genuine ability to work.
Matt Hawkins, Lewisham Green Party candidate for Brockley ward, said,
'ATOS is the embodiment of this government’s heartless approach to welfare. The situation is now so bad that we have become increasingly numb to the horror stories of severely disabled people being declared “fit for work” by this cruel organisation. ATOS isn’t fit for work. It isn’t fit for society.
Lewisham Green Party is proud to support the ATOS day of action and join the calls for the ending of their work capability assessments. The coalition of support behind the day of action shows that Britain is home to a compassionate and caring community – one that is fed-up with seeing the humanity stripped out of government.'
Andrea Carey, Lewisham Green Party candidate for Ladywell ward, added,
'The mainstream media turn the public against benefit claimants and the main three parties use that as an excuse to attack them. It's a vicious cycle designed to set us against each other and distract us from the real problem: the ongoing movement of money from the bottom to the top.
Instead of attacking the unemployed, low paid and disabled we need to clamp down on tax havens, excessive bonuses and a mainstream media which puts the agenda of its owners above the common good.'
The protests start at 8.00 tomorrow morning.